As three female former Goldman Sachs employees launch a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the firm in New York, commentators have put the alleged behaviour of the firm's male workers – from ordering prostitutes to holding boys-only meetings on the golf course – down to the "testosterone-fuelled" banking culture.

The link between testosterone and the charging of escort services to corporate hospitality accounts remains unproven by modern science, as does the association between the male sex hormone and the exclusion of female employees from the golf courses of middle America. Indeed, a 2009 study suggested that oestrogen may have as much to do with aggressive behaviours in male mice as testosterone does.

The argument for testosterone as a cause of male chauvinism is cowardly – after all, you can't take a hormone to an employment tribunal. Blaming a "testosterone-driven culture" for sexism stops men taking responsibility for their behaviour. This is as sexist as any piece of cod biological determinism, suggesting males somehow can't help behaving like idiots – after all, sheer liquid chauvinism is flowing in their veins.

In fact, testosterone has been shown to be most effective as an excuse for social aggression rather than a cause of it. In another recent study participants performed more aggressively in a financial simulation game if they believed they had been given a shot of testosterone – even when they had been given a placebo – whereas those who had received testosterone unwittingly were in fact more likely to "play fair". "It's possible that people who are inclined towards selfish, aggressive or dominant behaviour would find it easier to rationalise their actions if they felt that they were under the spell of testosterone," says science writer Ed Yong, noting that the study suggests that "testosterone's negative stereotype" can give people a "licence to misbehave".

Feminists often rightly take offence when men dismiss women as "crazy" or "over-emotional" because of the neurotypical effects of premenstrual syndrome. Women do not wish to be reduced to our hormones, so why should we do the same to men? Blaming steroid aggression for corporate sexism is a cop-out.